Sleep in Military Operations

Subsets of the military operational community differ in their relative doctrinal emphasis on continuous versus sustained operations. The special operations 

Until recently, it has been assumed that the performance effects of chronic sleep restriction were a milder version of the effects of acute, total sleep deprivation and that recovery from both was rapid once normal amounts of sleep were restored. Results from a study recently completed in our laboratory suggest that this may not be the case. 

In a sleep dose-response study (3,8) we examined the effects of three conditions of sleep restriction [3, 5, or 7 hr time in bed (TIB)] and one condition of sleep augmentation (9 hr TIB) on performance over 7 days and during the subsequent 3 days of recovery (all groups = 8 hr TIB). These sleep dose-response effects were compared against the training/baseline period in which all groups were allowed 8 hr TIB. 

The pattern of adaptation to chronic sleep restriction punctuated with acute, total sleep deprivation and rapid recovery from the latter may yield the types of changes in performance depicted in Fig. 2. Across the three armed services, in combat operations and in training for combat operations, severe total sleep deprivation is rare. Much more common for all is chronic, moderate sleep restriction at levels that would be expected to produce stable, albeit degraded performance. 

Results from our unpublished field studies (in which wrist-worn actigraphs were used to record sleep/wake history) conducted at the National Training Center (NTC), the U.S. Army s desert warfare training center in the high desert of Southern California, indicate that the higher the rank and the higher the echelon of command and control, the less the sleep obtained over the 14 days of the 

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